Skip to main content

the rail machine

The train is an interesting machine. Huge iron cubes (eight to ten, usually) the size of a big room, are connected to form a long chain that moves with the help of giant engines. People travel inside these cubes that move on parallel-breadth iron tracks laid across vast areas. Such tracks form an extensive network that connects cities, countries and even continents except where separated by ocean.

Railway contributes to a major proportion of the world’s land-based transportation system; out of which, a huge portion is intercity railway network. Intercity railway is known by many names – metro, Mass Rail Transit, Subway, Cityrail, etc. It usually runs underneath the city in elaborately carved tunnels. These tunnels make heavy use of iron and steel in order to support the structure, that are often carved seven to eight and even eleven stories under the ground.

Underground railway stations are equally magnificent. They incorp orate sophisticated elevators, convenient stores, automatic vendors, and even railway museums. One of the recently renewed intercity railways, The Budapest Metro, has an underground system that can provide shelter for more than two hundred thousand people, including fresh air (with an air-filter), drinking water (3 liters) and washing water (27 liters) per person per day – in case of an attack or catastrophe in the Hungarian capital. Remarkable, indeed!

The Dubai Metro scheduled to begin operation in 2009 will use driverless Kinki-Sharyo trains – driven entirely using computer software, that stops at stations and picks up people before moving on to another station.

A quick look at the facts reveals some interesting information about the world’s railway systems:
  • The longest passenger line is the Trans-Siberian Railroad in Russia, with length of 9,297 km from Moscow to Vladivostok.
  • The biggest station is Nagoya Station in Japan, with floor area of 446,000 square meters.
  • The deepest railway station is Park Pobedy Metro Station in Russia. It is 90 meters below the surface.
  • The oldest metro is the London Underground, opened in 1863 AD.
  • The fastest train is the ‘flying’ magnetic levitation or maglev train in Japan with speed of 584 kph.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

this symbol is called a lemniscate, and other facts

The technical term for your foot "falling asleep" is "taresthesia". "Pins and needles" is really called "paresthesia". Great Britain has invaded about 90% of the world's countries. There's a brand of hand sanitizer called "Maybe You Touched Your Genitals". There was a hoax that the world was ending in 1806 because someone wrote "Christ is coming" on eggs, that were later stuffed into a hen. Gary Numan is actually 13 days older than Gary Oldman. There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs six times: Indivisibility. Los Angeles's full name is 'El Pueblo de Nuestra la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula'. Polyamorous people have invented a word to indicate the opposite feeling of jealousy - compersion. The Macrocilix maia moth confuses predators with wing patterns that mimic two flies eating bird poop. It even releases a pungent odor to drive home the dec
Post a Comment
Read more

abort, retry, ignore poem

The infamous Abort, Retry, Ignore message box of Windows, with no option given to close it. Found this classic and fun poem about the "Abort, Retry, Ignore" message. I have been able to trace back the source to Annoyances.org. Here it is: Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary, System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor, Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets. Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer, I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store, Only this and nothing more. Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
 Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.
 But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
 "Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"
 One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,
 Just, "Abort
Post a Comment
Read more

an inflating flashbag

This is a flash drive. A flashbag, more accurately. When it is empty, it is slim and as data is filled into it, the bag starts to inflate until it is full. How ingenious! The creators have applied micro- pumps to achieve this, as stated in their site . When the device is about to blow off, it gives a message - "There is not enough free space". At times when it is not plugged in, it remains inflated relative to the amount of data it is holding. There are other innovative products from the creators of flashbag - such as C'ALL future phone , Balloophone , AllTunes , GMEA , Trings and Remobeads . Great, PlusMinus ! Kudos to your grey cells.
3 comments
Read more